page_title: James B. Weaver
section_title: Farmers' Alliance and a new party
hierarchical_section_title: James B. Weaver / Farmers' Alliance and a new party
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of James B. Weaver, 1892
context_page_description: James Baird Weaver was a member of the United States House of Representatives and two-time candidate for President of the United States. Born in Ohio, he moved to Iowa as a boy when his family claimed a homestead on the frontier. He became politically active as a young man and was an advocate for farmers and laborers. He joined and quit several political parties in the furtherance of the progressive causes in which he believed. After serving in the Union Army in the American Civil War, Weaver returned to Iowa and worked for the election of Republican candidates. After several unsuccessful attempts at Republican nominations to various offices, and growing dissatisfied with the conservative wing of the party, in 1877 Weaver switched to the Greenback Party, which supported increasing the money supply and regulating big business. As a Greenbacker with Democratic support, Weaver won election to the House in 1878.
  The Greenbackers nominated Weaver for president in 1880, but he received only 3.3 percent of the popular vote. After several more attempts at elected office, he was again elected to the House in 1884 and 1886.
context_section_description: The new president, Republican Benjamin Harrison, set April 22, 1889, as the date when the rush for the Unassigned Lands would begin. Weaver arrived at a railroad station in the territory in March with an eye toward relocating there. The would-be homesteaders welcomed him with great acclaim. Although settlers were not allowed to stake claims before noon on April 22, many scouted out the land ahead of time, and even marked off informal claims; Weaver was among them.  After the rush, settlers who had waited challenged the claims of the "Sooners" who had entered early. Weaver's identification with the group harmed his popularity in the territory.  His claim was ultimately denied, and he returned to Iowa in 1890.
  Weaver and his wife moved their household in 1890 from Bloomfield to Colfax, near Des Moines, as the former Congressman took up more active management of the Iowa Tribune. The Greenback and Union Labor parties were defunct, but he still proselytized for their ideals. In August 1890, Weaver addressed a convention in Des Moines where former Greenbackers and Laborites gathered, although he declined their nomination for Congress. The economic conditions that had created the Greenback party had not gone away; many farmers and laborers believed their situation had gotten worse since the Long Depression began in 1873. Many farmers had joined the Farmers' Alliance, which sought to promote soft-money ideas on a non-partisan basis; rather than create a third party, they endorsed major party candidates who supported their ideas and hired speakers to educate the public. Alliance-backed candidates did well in the 1890 elections, especially in the South, where Democrats endorsed by the Alliance won 44 seats.
  Alliance members gathered that December in Ocala, Florida, and formulated a platform, later called the Ocala Demands, that called for looser money, government control of the railroads, a graduated income tax, and the direct election of senators. Weaver endorsed the message in the Tribune and corresponded with the group's leader, Leonidas L. Polk. Weaver attended the group's convention in Cincinnati in May 1891, where he and Polk argued against forming a third party. Another delegate, Ignatius L. Donnelly, argued forcefully for a break from the two major parties, and his argument carried the day, although Weaver and Polk kept many of Donnelly's more radical proposals out of the convention's statement of principles.
caption: Weaver in 1892
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